bookworm

[Tips] Unlike man-to-man disagreements, spats between nations carry the paradox of absolutely necessitating some sort of compromise while not having an easy means of negotiation. As the scope of states balloons, communication technology has failed to keep up, making far-reaching conglomerations not yet a reality; instead, major powers elect to send embassies and politically protected ambassadors to fill them.

Cecilia was as sheltered as they come, and she had spent most of her life holed up in a monastery. She spent her days revering the Goddess of Night, praying in Her tranquil sanctuary, and emulating Her grace by serving the people of the land. As serene as this lifestyle was, it was rather devoid of surprise.
The hymns she sang were the same that she’d sung hundreds upon thousands of times before. Her days studying proverbs and giving alms to the faithful and needy were eternal repetitions of a set schedule.
Yet life at the church, surely boredom epitomized to some, was not so bad for Cecilia. In South Rhine, far from the imperial capital and regional capital alike, on Fullbright Hill—though it seemed dubious whether the twenty-four-hundred-meter summit constituted a hill—she found herself leading a life she’d chosen to live.
Yes, she had arrived there on order of her parents, but over time, her own desires had shifted to align. A life of earnest prayer and wholehearted faith in the Goddess proved a good one. Words could not describe the soothing fulfillment that engulfed her in those moments when she truly felt the Mother’s tenderhearted embrace.
This sensation was something unknowable to all but pure-blooded vampires—a satisfaction and repose limited to those born with inherited sin, those who were denied the fate of death. At times, the reaper was liberty; he was forgiveness. Alas, no explanation could suffice for mortal comprehension, just as the immortals could never understand the lesser races’ frantic fear of aging.
By no means could she consider a life so rich with the peace absent in worldly cities a bad one. Though others pitied her fall from epicurean luxury to simple clothes and meals, Cecilia valued this placid state more highly than any pile of gold coins.
That said, her life after having come to the capital and been called to her father’s side had been an unbroken string of surprises rife with excitement.
It wasn’t that she thought one was better than the other. But in the three meager days since she’d overheard the maids’ whispers and fled her house, her two friends had given her more wonder and drama than all her years in the church.
She’d run on the rooftops to escape her pursuers; she’d sneaked into the sewers, only to witness her first life-or-death battle; she’d dressed up in disguise and hidden herself away in the Mage’s Corridor, and even made her way to the Imperial College—a place she’d only heard of secondhand. Positively everything was new to her, and the flood of unfiltered information reignited a long-dormant sense of curiosity.
Even now, she wanted to get up and explore any place her feet could carry her to. The only reason she hadn’t was the plea of the young piecemaker who’d saved her to stay put, handing her a book of ehrengarde puzzles and seating her in his sister’s room with tears in his eyes.
And of course, how could we forget the boy? Were it not for him, Cecilia would have been dragged back to the manor ages ago. She would have fallen into that alleyway burnt orange by the setting sun, and her head would have burst like an overripe fig. Decapitation spelled no doom for vampires, but both Sun and Moon had vied for control of the heavens in that hour; her regeneration would have been long. Even a purebred like herself would have been apprehended before regaining consciousness.
Cecilia had been on the verge of dying for the first time in an unknown city, of meeting her end alongside the end.
Yet it was not so. Catching her in gentle arms, the two of them appeared.
It was the piecemaker boy whom she’d dueled over the board many a time. Despite his pretty hair and kitten-like eyes, he had been a fiendish rapscallion in their games, and she’d frequented his stall determined to get the better of him.
The boy was incredibly kind. He was a gentleman unthinkable from his play, going so far as to protect her without any connection between them—all without a second thought of the fate that could await a commoner butting into noble politics to right the wrong of an unwanted marriage. Far from stopping there, he even shouldered the danger of sheltering her in his master’s abode without a hint of hesitation.
With him came the raven-haired mage by his side. Hailing from a people as peculiar as Cecilia’s, they had accepted her as a friend. Not only had their magic shielded her, they’d created a path to safety when it seemed there was nowhere left to go.
Surely, hers could not have been a good first impression. Without Cecilia, Mika and Erich both would have happily ended their days after comfortably soaking in a bathhouse. If they had so chosen, they could have even stopped their friend from taking the path of danger; she’d realized right away that the duo’s bond was something unshakable by a girl who’d literally fallen out of the sky.
Yet they had not. Raven black did not reject the actions of shimmering gold; it instead chose to protect the pitch-dark shade of night.
Though the pair lacked the armor and horses of the knights in fables, as they dragged her forward by the hand, Cecilia thought they must be the heroes the poets sung of. To cast everything aside for someone in need—for a lone girl in trouble—was precisely the stuff of sagas.
Selfless and compassionate, they volunteered themselves to see her predicament through. They refused to abandon her after learning of her origins; they stayed even though hers was a race that only grew easier to hate the more one learned.
Cecilia was a vampire, the progeny of a mensch whose tale lived on in an infamous fable, The Man Who Swindled the Sun. After tricking the Sun God into giving him immortality, the original vampire incurred the divine Father’s wrath, earning a curse to burn and blister his people in His light forevermore. Without the protection of shade, His curse would melt flesh and bone, and eventually reduce even their souls to ash.
Truthfully, this curse was tolerable. As a matter of fact, the Night Goddess Cecilia worshiped admonished her other half, stating that He who was tricked was at fault as well. When She appeared in the skies, the curse weakened; when the Sun God relinquished His daily reign, the vampires fully regained their undying nature.
The other curse was excruciating.
The patron god’s punishment spake thusly: drink directly from the warm fonts of bloody nectar which He hath created, or suffer eternal thirst.
Some may initially consider this to be a mistake; why not make it the other way around and deny them access to His creations? However, for all the Sun God’s impulsive tendencies, He was no fool; He knew that by tying their only reprieve from drought to conflict, He could curb the accursed people’s power to dominate. This restriction was the ultimate reason vampires had failed to ascend to hegemonic dominion, constrained to a fate of reasonable rule as statesmen of peaceful nations.
Without populous peoples to feed on, they were doomed to die out with their prey. If they succumbed to their basest urges, the clump of sheer mana next to their beating hearts would muddy their souls and reduce them to beasts; do that, and they would become the enemies of all men, reduced from people to monsters that needed to be driven into the sun.
The curse clung to a vampire’s instincts, bending their tastes and lust for vice in ways no other being could experience. The thirst was horrific—they couldn’tdie. No matter how parched or how starved they got, the Sun God refused to reclaim his gift of immortality; after all, they suffered more this way.
How long it took before any given vampire began to hunger varied, and Cecilia’s devotion to the Mother Goddess was rewarded with a particularly long period of repose. Where others had to feed once per month, she could easily go half a year; if she put her mind to fasting, she could endure several years without losing her mind.
Sadly, that was not the case now. It had been quite a while since she’d last accepted a churchgoer’s charity, and she’d been slated to feast at a banquet hosted at her father’s villa. Running away had thrown away her chance to attend, and her recent overexertion meant her craving had been ramping up by the time she was hidden away.
It was torture. While all peoples were born understanding the pain of starvation, that of mensch was incomparable to the horror of vampiric thirst. A mensch could starve to the brink of death, deranged enough to sink teeth into their own newborn, and still they would not understand the pain. Such was the root of the vampires’ demonic classification; all their lunacy hinged on sustenance.
For all Cecilia’s attempts to stay strong, the discerning boy had found her out instantly. He was well versed in the unique predicaments of the world’s many kiths, perhaps because of his proximity to the College, and must have pieced together what was going on after looking at her struggle.
When she awoke next, she rose from the couch she was borrowing to find a wine glass filled with fresh blood. She wasted no time on such foolish questions as whose it was. There were only two warm fonts of nectar present, and even their short time together was enough to know the blindly doting brother would never spill his own sister’s blood.
The fact that he had said nothing and feigned ignorance spoke wordless volumes to his character and that of those who had raised him. He knew imperial vampires considered the act of sucking or drinking blood highly indecent: only during dinners with close friends and family or in the comfort of a secluded room did they dare partake, hiding in unseen shadows. The culinary culture of imperial vampires was a thoroughly cheerless affair.
Of course, they could also eat standard foods, and they could allow the cradle of drunkenness to rock them to sleep. Yet the only thing that could sate the truest of hungers was the crimson that floated in this cup.
Knowing the burden of her kind, the boy chose to take a step beyond merely saving Cecilia’s future: he bestowed upon her the benevolence of his own lifeblood.
To a mage, blood was priceless. It served as the circulator of internal mana and a catalyst for spells; few would consider giving it away under any circumstance. The more magecraft one studied, the more they were sure to realize the cost and dangers of entrusting it to another.
Yet here she was, holding a full cup of the stuff—no small amount by any metric. She had not even asked for it, and it was here with no mention of an expected thank-you.
The blood was heavy and delicious. Often telling of what went into a person’s body, whether that be food, drink, or the very air they breathed, the liquid conduit of mana revealed more than the family registry at a church.
Cecilia’s tongue went numb and she jumped and twitched in delight. It was young, healthy, and chock-full of magical power; it offered a stimulation unlike any other she’d experienced. The flavor was both gentle and explosive, dancing on her tongue in a way only mensch blood could. As it slid down her throat, it left behind a rich and brightening aftertaste.
When one considered that the contents of the glass had come from a young boy’s body, it seemed far too much, and yet she had finished it in the blink of an eye. Forgoing the modesty and virtuous poverty the Night Goddess endorsed, she greedily lapped at the droplets sticking to the cup with fangs brazenly exposed.

Cecilia would never live this down. To lose herself to such an extent that she would put gluttony over manners was not a matter of priesthood or nobility; she could hardly call herself a vampire. Longingly gazing at the perfectly clean wine glass after the fact was a disgrace like no other. At this rate, she would deserve the derogatory title used abroad: she was practically a bloodsucker.
She threw herself into a particularly complicated ehrengarde puzzle and straightened herself out. Pushing away the drained glass she’d been unable to let go of, she steeled herself to welcome him back as a proper priestess.
The boy would be home from shopping at any minute. Cecilia was going to have to explain how she intended to escape, so she needed to clear her mind, carry herself with poise, and make sure no shameful thoughts—
“We’re back! Man, it sure is getting hotter.”
The empress in her hands fell to the table, knocking away the loyal retainer and knight waiting on her below and toppling a sturdy castle in the process. The calamity of the board reflected her state of distress perfectly.
With the end of spring came warm weather; with warm weather came an open collar; and with an open collar came the boy’s neck, tantalizingly bare.

[Tips] In the Trialist Empire, using one’s fangs to feed straight from one’s prey is considered gauche; vampires instead feed by drinking from a glass. This tradition arose as a means of easing early imperial fears of their predatory nature.
However, there is an exception made for a “lover”—a special partner who allows the vampire to sink their fangs into flesh unimpeded.

Mika and I returned to the atelier to find our vampiric lady in something of a panic. It was still a tad early for her to be up, but perhaps the unfamiliar environment meant she was having a hard time sleeping too. She looked to have been busying herself with the book of intermediate ehrengarde puzzles I’d brought as a time-killer, and dropped the piece in her hand as soon as she looked at me.
Huh? Do I look funny?
I’d made sure to do a cursory wipedown so as not to appear in front of a blue-blooded lady drenched in sweat, and I’d Cleaned my clothes to make sure I wouldn’t smell. Maybe it was time to start taking some add-ons for this spell to imbue myself with a pleasant perfume after the fact.
“Um,” I said cautiously, “is something the matter?”
“N-No! Not at all! Welcome back!”
I’d figured it would be best to probe into my mistakes for posterity’s sake; Miss Cecilia responded by whipping the puzzle book to her face so quickly that it left an afterimage.
Fair enough, I supposed: pointing out someone’s flaws was pretty awkward.
“As long as it isn’t anything important...” I knew it definitely was, but I moved on and began unpacking our luggage. When I turned around, I could feel an intense gaze drilling into my head and upper back.
Concerned, I groped around with an Unseen Hand...but didn’t find anything weird clinging to me. For a second there, I’d thought I’d fallen for the timeless “kick me” sign. Though I supposed Mika would have noticed a prank like that—assuming she wasn’t the culprit, that is.
In which case, I had no clue why Miss Celia was staring at me like this. I dwelt on the issue while flapping the hot air out of my shirt, when I suddenly sensed a presence behind me.
I know you’re trying to hide and all, but you’re not catching me off guard that easily. How many years do you think I spent dodging Margit?
“Welcome home, Dear Brother!”
But of course, I wasn’t going to dodge my adorable baby sister. Elisa phased through the door of a wardrobe and leapt at me; I intentionally let her get the jump. I caught her weightless body as she wrapped her arms around my neck and slotted her chin over my shoulder. Living up to my sister’s expectations was all part of a good big brother’s job.
“Wow, you scared me!” I said. “Come on, Elisa, that’s dangerous. What if you fell?”
“But I knew you’d catch me for sure, Dear Brother!”
Once upon a time, Margit had told me that leaping on another person took a great deal of courage: they might reflexively swat you away, or they might lose their balance and send both of you tumbling. Clinging to someone’s collar and burying one’s face in their chest or back could only be done with someone truly dependable.
Elisa’s joyful, innocent smile proved that she had absolute faith in me. No matter what she did, she was sure I would be there to catch and forgive her. I felt like I was using up all my good karma; our family’s little girl was an angel after all. I’d have to watch out for any gods trying to snatch her up as their bride.
“That doesn’t mean it’s good to jump on someone without notice, Elisa.”
“Oh, welcome to you as well, Mika!”
I was too much of a doter to scold her properly, but thankfully, Mika put in a gentle warning in my stead. Much to my delight, having spent so much time locked in together had made both of them comfortable with one another’s names.
“Besides, Elisa,” Mika continued, “you’re a well-to-do young lady. You can’t be hiding in the dresser like that. How long were you in there?”
“Umm, since my dear brother left.”
“Buwha?” A bizarre noise escaped my mouth. I’d stopped to do several errands on my way to meeting Mika, so I’d been out for a few hours; had she been in there this whole time? I asked her why she’d do something like that, and my sister pouted and turned away.
Ugh, so that’s it. She still wasn’t comfortable around Miss Celia.
I scolded her for being a bad girl and poked the air out of her puffed cheeks, but this just got her to giggle and squeeze me tighter. While I knew that the best thing to do for her as a person would be to seriously reprimand her, I just couldn’t bring myself to be hard on her when she was acting spoiled.
“You shouldn’t just ignore our guest, okay, Elisa?” Mika joined me in gently poking her cheek. “She prepared a lot of stories to tell you, you know.”
Mika then pointed at the small table next to Miss Cecilia’s temporary bed—which was a couch, by the way. She had staunchly refused to use the bed on the principle of not intruding on the sleeping grounds of the room’s master; I begrudgingly let her sleep on the couch, knowing that any mattress I could get my hands on would be several times less comfortable.
At any rate, the desk was stacked with books relating to the Night Goddess that Mika had borrowed from the College library. There were holy texts, hymns, and even picture books made for children, but they showed no signs of having been opened; Elisa really had hidden away the whole time.
Considering how Miss Celia was devout enough to employ miracles, I had no doubt she knew the scripture of her faith by heart. I felt guilty: she’d gone out of her way to ask for these all for Elisa, and never got the chance to use them.
“All is well, Mika,” the priestess said. “Children of her age are prone to such feelings. Matters of compatibility are often unamendable.”
Not even my old chum’s admonishment could get Elisa to face the vampire, but the victim of her neglect spoke up in her defense.
Miss Celia was right to say that this attitude was common in children. Whether a child took a liking to someone or not could be swayed by the most superficial things, and failing to adhere to social standards was a part of growing up. Whether the underlying cause was shyness or a bad first impression, it was often too much for an immature soul to explain in words; most simply let bygones be bygones and waited for time and growth to solve the issue.
The charitable priestess had claimed she was good with children, and here was the proof: not only did she understand them logically, but she had the benevolent mercy to forgive their childishness.
“You’re too soft, Celia...”
“I’m sorry, Mika. But really, I don’t mind.”
The vampire gracefully smiled on the couch and the tivisco crossed her arms with a troubled frown; I sat by the wayside appreciating the two black-haired beauties’ amicable exchange with the world’s cutest girl around my neck. What a blessed place to be. I felt so bad about being a guy stinking up the place that I wanted to turn into the potted plant in the corner.
“Wait, Dear Brother! What’s this?!”
“Huh? Oh, right, that’s a present. Look, ice candy!”
“Yay!”
However, our family’s little princess noticed our gift for her, so it was best to let her dig in quickly. It was preserved with the heat-retention spell I’d designed for my mystic thermite, so I wasn’t worried about it melting; I just didn’t want to make my twinkly-eyed sister wait longer than she had to.
“Well then.” I put on my brightest smile in the hopes that we might all be able to enjoy a cordial atmosphere. “Shall we partake in some tea?”

[Tips] Owing to its multicultural population, smell is a large part of imperial aesthetics. Excessive body odor and perfume alike are considered transgressions against races with keen noses. However, the art of selecting scents is a delicate one: while there are many wrong answers, there is hardly ever one that is universally correct.
The safest choice is usually to employ a lightly aromatic soap or flower to mask one’s sweat, with smoky smells following closely behind as a contender for least offensive. Citrus is harder to fit in for day-to-day use, as groups with canine or feline ancestry often find the tart odor much too strong.

The commandments bestowed from gods to man in the Trialist Empire of Rhine were not so heavy when compared to those of the deities of other lands. The flock—barring that of the Sun God who led them—predominantly upheld the virtues of austerity and chastity, but none expected the common person to rigidly adhere to every rule. Even the dedicated priests of Their cults were not held to a particularly strict standard.
Unchecked gluttony, adultery, or rampant lust were reasons for reproof whether the judge was divine or earthly; the Rhinian pantheon’s leniency was plain to see from how its priests were allowed to partake in matrimony, pursue flesh, or suckle the sweet nectar of drink so long as it was in moderation.
However, there was one exception: those who took after the loving Mother of the Night lived by a precept of self-discipline. The merciful matron goddess upheld that true compassion was not the product of abundance; benevolence was not a tool for the wealthy to trade wide margins for contentment with themselves.
At times, love was heavy; it was painful; it was excruciating. Empathy was rooted in the idea of sacrificing a part of oneself in the name of another.
Now, this was not exclusive to the Night Goddess, but Her church comprised several different factions. This differed from the religious delineations of Earth: those sometimes had entirely different rituals or even worshiped different entities, all due to discordant interpretations of the same holy scripture. Here in the Empire, circles of the same sect still pledged their devotions to the same deity, read their gospel in the same way, and were, strictly speaking, part of the same group.
Yet the faithful were ever liable to grope for more ways to demonstrate their devotion. Theological meditations on which aspect of their god of choice was holiest, or what would be most representative of their will, had been the beginnings for these religious diversions.
The gods may lovingly watch Their peoples, but those who ruled Rhine from Their heavenly perches had an unwritten rule to not interfere with the spiritual journeys of their flocks. Divine punishment and oracle alike were employed sparingly so long as an interpretation was not a self-serving desecration of Their names. As a direct result, the peoples below founded various circles in order to polish the cognitive sport of prayer into something more.
Upon first learning this, a certain blond boy had thought to himself that They were like authors who took no action against those who trod upon their canon, happy about the fact that people bothered to engage with their work so deeply—a rather pointless analogy, perhaps.
At any rate, the point at hand was that worship came in many forms. For example, take the Father that sat at the top of His pantheon. The Circle Brilliant chose to empty their wallets in His name, lavishly decorating their temples and rituals. On the other hand, those from the Circle Vivacious gratefully accepted His light and used it to earnestly raise the crops he gave life to. Some even subjected themselves to penance that would make followers of the War God balk, like those of the Circle Austere. Although they stood under the same banner, their displays of faith varied wildly.
In the Night Goddess’s case, there were two major branches within Her flock: the Magnanimous and the Immaculate. Cecilia had cast her lot with the latter.
While the Magnanimous threw themselves into charity in order to help the needy as their merciful Goddess might, those of the Circle Immaculate prized honorable poverty, helping others not with the whole of one’s fortunes, but what little they had left to spare after divesting themselves of worldly objects. One might say this group was unsuited for a vampiric noble, and there was little that could be said in return; still, the philosophy paired with Cecilia’s character well.
This adherence to prudence was oft spoken of as an unflinching asceticism. Even committing themselves to tortuous fasts, the Immaculate and their radical zeal instilled awe in even the devout priests of other factions.
As evidenced by her use of miracles, Cecilia had not been excepted from this harsh discipline. She had endured fasts wherein she could not so much as swallow back her spit before the Moon rose from Her slumber; she had forgone sleep to recite and transcribe sutras. The priestess had made do with little to nothing, and had spent so long in a destitute lifestyle that would drive others mad that she saw it as nothing more than the standard for life.
Yet that same girl now found herself unable to process her own emotions.
Mind you, this was not the result of Elisa’s presence hiding away the gorgeous contour of Erich’s neck, painted in by the captivating shade of uncovered skin; this caused her no disappointment.
By no means would she ever find herself dismayed that she could no longer see the tightly wound muscles packed under a wrapping of skin that remained fair despite enduring the sun’s light. It was no shame that his collarbone—which had teasingly peeked out from its home in his shirt collar earlier—was now out of sight.
Of course, a sudden rush of saliva threatened to puff up her cheeks with drool, but that was absolutely, positively, not all there was to it.
Whether it was intentional or not, Cecilia was perplexed by the girl who had hidden that neck away—by Elisa herself. For the past three days, she’d tried to open up to the changeling on several occasions, to no avail. Every attempt to start a conversation hit a wall of silence; any invitation to a round of ehrengarde was curtly refused on the grounds of not knowing the rules; her inquiries as to what she was doing were met with, “Homework from my master,” giving her no room to expand.
Cecilia simply could not understand Elisa.
The vampire did not consider herself bad with children—in fact, she was quite fond of them. Her sanctuary had often taken in orphans without homes, and she’d spent many a day traveling to nearby towns or cantons to serve the children in almshouses there.
Cecilia’s confidence in childcare was no hubris; children had indeed taken to her well over the years. She was kind, energetic, and had a wealth of knowledge to share. In fact, she had been so popular that it had been difficult to keep up with all the boys and girls wanting to play with her.
However, some youths had lived through harsh times, or gotten stuck in understandably childish cycles of thought that made them dislike her. She was not so arrogant as to believe that all children were meant to show her affection or anything of the sort. Whether wanting for experience or equipped with egos yet immature, Cecilia believed that every person was to be respected as an individual; at most, she prayed that one day, they might come to be friends.
But Elisa was not the same. Sometimes, when the girl stared at her, Cecilia felt something utterly alien in those big brown eyes; those were not the eyes of a child in her first decade of life. The priestess couldn’t quite put it to words, but for lack of a better term, she felt that the gaze was something that should only have been possible for someone more “adult.”
Having lived in a monastery for so long, Cecilia was not well acquainted with the look and could not pinpoint what it signified. Digging through her memories, she found the hue of her gaze similar to the people she’d met at one of her family’s estates, introduced to her as “friends of her father’s” or “the good lady of so-and-so house.” Whatever the case, she was sure that those eyes, readily changing with the light from brown to amber to gold, hid something extraordinary.
Look, Cecilia thought. Even now, as we chat over tea, I feel it across the table...
The priestess took a sip of fragrant tea and a bite of sweet ice to dispel the uncanny discomfort from her consciousness, clearing her throat in preparation to move to the serious matter at hand. It was finally time for her to unveil her trump card—to reveal how she planned on avoiding the treacherous roads and get to Lipzi.
“By the way, Elisa, Mika told me an interesting rumor today.”
“A rumor?”
Entrenched in the childish notion that she ought to wait until the conversation died down for maximum surprise, Cecilia waited for the siblings to finish their cute family moment. The sister had installed herself on her brother’s lap as a matter of course and happily waited to be spoon-fed. What was more, she was enjoying a sumptuous two flavors, just as Mika had. Cecilia had been treated to two flavors of ice candy as well, but Mika knew that Erich had almost assuredly only used the guise of equal treatment to pamper his sister, despite having only eaten a single ice pop himself.
“Come on, tell her, Mika.”
“Hm? Oh, all right, all right. Listen well, Elisa, because today, a ship that can fly through the air is coming to the capital!”
“Whaaat?!”
Two voices cried out in surprise. Cecilia screamed in sorrow at having her big surprise nipped in the bud.
The other three shrunk back in shock as the vampire shot up. How could they not? Here was a genteel saint who minded her manners and covered her lips for the faintest smile, leaping to her feet with a terrible cry.
“Um... Is something the matter?”
Erich’s gingerly muttered question was met with a response that produced yet another wave of dizzying astonishment: “How did you find out?!”